Troubleshooting a 4 axis Pro assembly

[kmoorehouse]

I assembled a board received last week, and really enjoyed the project. The instruction booklet was very clear and all tests during assembly went well.

I did a bench test and had some problems with pin assignments since I had followed an internet post that had drive and step pins reversed. Once I stumbled across the correct pin assignments everything worked.

I was playing around with increasing velocity and acceleration settings in Mach3, since I had set them very low for initial testing, and found the Z axis quit working. I inspected the board and discovered a short (1/4″ long) single wire strand from the motor wire had found its way under the board and was sitting across a couple pins of the Z axis stepper driver chip. I changed motors around to make sure there was no problem there, and my tests suggest that something on the board has failed.

Is there a test I can do to isolate the problem. I have only a multimeter to test with.

Any help appreciated.

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[BrianV]

Well, there’s not really a lot of things that can go bad, and there’s not really a lot of diagnosis that can be done either.

I’d have you start at the FAQs

http://hobbycnc.com/sp_faq/no-motor-movement/

and

http://hobbycnc.com/sp_faq/missing-steps/

If it’s a bad chip, email me brian at hobbycnc dot com and we’ll work it out.

BrianV

[kmoorehouse]

I installed a new drive chip on that axis and all is well now.

[Author]

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